August 6, 2009

Ding!

Well, there are advantages in being horribly ill: you play an awful lot of WoW. So much, in fact, that we dinged 80 the day before patch 3.2 hit. Given that I basically played WoW for 2 days solid it’s shocking think how long that would have taken me – probably at the very least a couple of weeks – had I not gone down with piggysniffles. It’s a weird pay off, although it simply makes me feel guilty in several directions at once, since being ill is meant to be spent lying in bed, feeling crappy, not sitting in bed feeling crappy AND playing WoW.

Being 80 is quite frankly bewildering.

The game has basically inundated me with Things I Could Be Doing, and I’m staggering around like a punchdrunk weasel. Polish the Horn of Whojamiflip? Sure. Blow up some garm? Yeah, gimme. Dark cultists, you say? Show me where. This scattergun approach is far from sensible, I have no idea what I’m doing half the time, or what it’s achieving. But after all whinging about Northrend, I am quite digging the quests in Icecrown. They’re not too fiddly, a lot of them involving good old fashioned killin, and it feels nicely like you’re part of a proper war in which you can, y’know, participate rather than follow lore figures about, singing the “you so fine you blow my mind” song. Although having battled side-by-side with Tirion to drive back the forces of the Scourge, I want to know why he has come to the conclusion that what the battle against Arthas really needs is a Renaissance Fair. I guess I’ll just save up the cash for an epic flyer (alas! Pointlesswing!) for now and then see what happens.

We also attempted to celebrate 80 by taken down Magister’s Terrace heroic. And we failed. It was actually pretty tricky. The thing about being 80 is that you secretly or not-so-secretly think you are now become invincible. We were doing pretty well though, thanks to judicious use of mind control. I love mind control (or mindrape as we call it) in every conceivable way but what I love best is taking control of enemy healers. Not only do you inspire all their compatriots to turn on them, but you can also use their spells to heal your own tank. And before the mind control wears off, you can blow all their cooldowns and leave them there, utterly violated and on about 20% health.

But that damnable Priestess and her posse did for us in the end. I hate that fight with a passion, and not the interesting sort of “I will take you down my nemesis, bwhaha” kind of passion. Maybe I just need to step back a bit and smell the OCD but I don’t like fights I can’t control. The best you can hope for is to control the pull, control the location and, hopefully, deploy some cc – even so, it’s carnage. With 2 of you, especially when you’re both pvp noobs, it’s fucking stupid. There must be a way of handling it but I’ve no idea what that way might be. Of course, the only cc we have is MC to which they’re all immune (wah!) which doesn’t help. But they stunlock M’Pocket Tank and then tear through me like I’m damp paper. It feels like there’s literally nothing we can do, except maybe get to the stage when M’Pocket Tank can solo them, and I’ll cower behind the wall while she does, with my WoW dwindling to about the size of a brazil nut. I guess we could duel-spec shadow / retri but that seems a bit extreme, and I suspect we’d resent it.

Dear Blizzard

I don’t like pvp. That’s why I’ve chosen not to do any, as is my inalienable right. Why must you punish me for this? Seriously not cool, Blizzard.

Fuck you,
Tam

So, yes, what with dinging 80, the arrival of the patch was kind of eclipsed. The only real change I noticed was the tidal wave of riding achievements over guild and the fact all my add-ons had fucked themselves sideways with a banana. There was, however, a buzz in the air as people ran about discovering changes and new content, which was nice. The weird thing is, now I’m 80, I’m not perpetually late to the party guy any more so I could have been doing that myself. But I’m still half-entrenched in the notion that none of it really applies to me and I’ll get to it in my own time. Except it does now, doesn’t it?

I did roll out my druid to check out his sexy new catform though. Failfriend also has a druid and didn’t know about the redesign so we met at Vengeance Landing and kittied together like crazies. Well I was pretty crazy. I ran in gleeful dash-fuelled circles around High Executor Anselm until I made myself dizzy while FF sat there, washing his face and yawning. Despite the awesome earring, I am still not a big bear fan. I’m sorry, but it’s the butt. I simply can’t tank from behind it. The catform is really kittyish though. I love the sleekness of it, and the way it moves. Comfrey is a kind of toffee-russet coloured kitty. Failfriend is black, with a mean look. It’s tempting to roll up a nelf just to see what I’d get.

I think the thing about 80 and the thing about patches is that … well … they’re kind of similar to losing your virginity. No, stay with me here, I know what I’m doing with this analogy (hah, do I ever). They’re both massive events you build up in your head to the point that you genuinely believe they’re going to completely change your life and the way you think about yourself. And then it happens, and although conceptually it was the most overwhelming and exciting thing ever because finally, finally you’d got there but practically it was awkward and fumbling and you were semi-paralysed with “is it supposed to be like this and am I doing it right” anxiety, and that never happens in the movies. And somewhere in the middle you get a glimpse of some receding wonder but it’s only a glimpse. And when it’s done you wait for that moment, the one that’s going to change everything, and then you realise that it’s never coming, because you’re still you and change comes, if it comes at all, in incremental fragments on your journey towards the infinite horizon.

Like this:

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Congrats on 80! I wouldn’t worry about thinking you suddenly have to do everything. You can carry on doing things at your own pace, discovering the end game piece by piece. You’re at level cap, there’s no rush!

Thank you🙂 Yay! And you’re right, there is no rush. I suppose it’s very easy to get yourself into that peculiar mindset whereby, being able to do everything, somehow means you do less than being able to do nothing🙂

“And when it’s done you wait for that moment, the one that’s going to change everything, and then you realise that it’s never coming, because you’re still you and change comes, if it comes at all, in incremental fragments on your journey towards the infinite horizon.”

THIS QUOTE IS SO WIN!!!!

Tamarind if you ever get a RL job that does not involve writing THE GODS THEMSELVES WILL WEEP FROM ON HIGH!
Gems like this “QUOTE” and your entire analogy thing are one of the many reasons why your blog just plain rocks! Well references to Eddie and dinosaurs also continue to hold my fascination😀 GZ on 80 welcome to endgame hope you enjoy your stay… I didn’t😦 it becomes a job or more like a really lame BASIC program.

Heheh, thank you, you’re very kind, I think I was high on anti-swine-flu medication at the time so I can take no responsibility for it🙂 Also I think you’d need a very large T-shirt or very small text, which might defeat the point. That is unless you want people with bad eyesight squiting at your torso in the street.

I do, as it happens, do a reasonable quantity of writing in my job but it’s not the glamorous, creative sort of writing – and, truthfully, I’m glad of it. Let’s face it, the muses are a flock of fickle bitches and there’s often something depressing of about trying to harness something you enjoy doing into something that generates cash. Cf. World of Warcraft, actually, the dangers of endgame – which comes perilously close to funnelling all the things you used to do for fun into some kind of farming exercise. Also I’m secretly into the subleties of writing for a purpose – there’s a kind of on-going fascination in straining for lucidity and brevity. Which is why, I suppose, it’s such a pleasure to let your hair down in blogging, where I never worry about either lucidity or brevity😉

I’m sorry you haven’t found much for you at 80 – from the past tense, have you given up on WoW entirely? Alas! I don’t think M’Pocket Tank and I are ever likely to pursue the raiding route but I’m hoping we can find some niche that suits us🙂

Well if this is the result of anti-swine-flu medication, someone send a case of that stuff to the guys who write the quests at ActiBlizzard.
“there’s often something depressing of about trying to harness something you enjoy doing into something that generates cash”, you have that right I am still trying to take my love of all that sucks electricity and has a monitor attached to it and turn it into a profitable pursuit. Unfortunately there is a World of difference between coding and gaming, but meh it pays the bills ;D

Yes, I must admit that I have canceled my subscription.😦 It’s become a endless loop for me (kindly refer to the programming block in my first post😀 ) I’ve recently had a major reduction in available playing time caused by That EVIL MONSTER RL. Also I’ve found it rather hard, to find things that interest me since my small circle of online friends imploded. That was the most important thing for me in Wowing really, Friends, silly banter, a bit of whiskey😀 and good clean fun killing “misguided through the hands of an old God” Giants and Elementals😀 Have no Fear Tamarind, I shall continue to read your words of Hilarity even tho I am no longer infatuated with Azeroth. Almost 3 years of playing time is enough tbh.

Forget not to praise M’PT daily, cause at the end of the day, this game just isn’t made to be played alone…

P.S. I don’t think I’ve ever been accused of being lucid or short on words😀
Thought for the day :Why Lucidity = Lucid but Brevity Breve ?? The English language a paradox warped through an enigma

When dinging 80 on my toon, it reminded me of the line from Army of Darkness. The evil army raises a skeleton, and another skeleton says, “Welcome to the land of the living, Here’s a shovel get digging”

In other words turning 80 is just half the battle, you got alot of work ahead of you. I know how you hate work, but if you don’t do it what’s the point of turning 80.

First time I hit level cap was during Burning Crusade. I didn’t have the first clue what I wanted to do, though I hated PvP, and was pretty sure that raiding wasn’t going to be it either (because people? stress? Nothankyou. I barely ran instances while leveling, because that would have involved being social.) But, everybody else in my guild was getting attuned to Karazhan, so I tagged along. I even endured that hideous final step, the awful Black Morass instance. But the first time I set foot in Kara, I was hooked. Hooked enough, moreover, to overcome the whole misanthropy thing.

You? Misanthropic? I don’t believe it. Not even for a second🙂 Even so, you’ve come a long way from “people, stress, no thank you” to “hmm, I think I’ll found a guild today.”

Oh god, the Black Morass, that’s a terrible instance. It’s given us nothing but trauma. M’Pocket Tank and I finally did it, at level, like 78 with a level 78 hunter along for the DPS. How embarrassing. To be honest, with the hardcore DPS it was easy as anything – ah, yes, the BM typifing certain types of instance experience: impossible or trivial.

I don’t think it’s likely that M’Pocket Tank and I will get into raiding but, who knows, hellboars have been scientifically proven to occasionally fly.

The world is now your oyster…or clam or something. You know, the clams you get off of Murlocs that you open hoping there’s a really cool pearl in there that you can sell on auction but it’s really just more clam meant that you can cook up into a stew and vendor sell because you won’t eat it and they sure as hell won’t go on auction…

GRATS! Its a big deal, I remember dinging 80 in icecrown, it was awesome. Gearing for heroics isn’t hard, lots of gear you can get without ever setting foot in a heroic instance. As a caster, tailoring and jewelcrafting have some purples for you, and there are a decent amount of rep items.

I also feel your pain on the hatred of PvP. . .Why couldn’t my friends play on a PvE server? I like it so much more!

To me, 80 feels like retirement mode: do your dailies, watch the gold come in, maybe do some crafting, rest a lot while other characters are being used.

My tailoring is kind of languishing. Also I feel vaguely resentful of tailoring because eternium thread costs 3gold a pop. I know at 80 this is absolutely nothing just stop and think about it for a second. 3 … gold … for thread?! What the fuck?! What kind of thread *is* it?

As a healer, you should be able to get into instances even being undergeared. This is actually the best time for you to start. Overgeared raiders are running heroic content for badges. All of the loot you need will flow to you and you will be getting emblems of conquest as well. Before you know it, you will be rolling in the purples.

I prefer 5 man instances and 10 man instances to 25s, so this is a nice change.

Yeah but I don’t want to be the crap healer who made everybody wipe all the time. Besides, M’Pocket Tank and I like to do things together so it’s worth gearing up first so WE CAN RULE THE UNIVERSE TOGETHER AS HEALER AND TANK. Ahem. So I guess we’re going to start on the long slog to better gear and see where we end up.

Gratz on the ding, oh perfectly coiffured one. If you can stand the repetition, I’d highly recommend grinding some Wyrmrest reputation for ye olde healer head enchant. You do know about the whole tabard championing thing, right? They also have three dailies, but two are in Coldarra and one of those is a Royal Pain in the Arse.

Thanks for the gratz🙂 Somebody’s talk of a moonshroud robe turned my perfectly coiffured head so I’m grinding tailoring. In a mere 6 years, 2 months it will be mine, all mine, mwahahaa. Actually frostweave seems to drop like confetti and it’s not insanely over-priced on the AH so with a bit of concentrated effort I should be able to work my poor cow’s fingers to the bone and have him churn me out my first useful epic.

Delrissa was my least favorite fight in all of BC, partially because if you got a bad combination of adds, there was nothing you could do about it. On Heroic, we were in the habit of entering the instance, clearing away the first pull, then leaning our heads over the side of the balcony to see which adds we had. If we had two out of three of the warriors+rogue, or none of the adds was a demon, go out and reset and try again, because otherwise it would be an exercise in futility. Also, group composition was extremely important. You couldn’t just bring whoever you wanted — you NEEDED a warlock, because having someone who could banish one add, seduce another and fear a third was worth more than anything anyone else could bring.

Don’t try to do everything you’re faced with now that you’re 80, you’ll drive yourself mad. Just pick one or two to focus on and ignore the rest. I personally pretend raids and PvP don’t exist (though I do them again every now and then whenever I start to forget how much I dislike them), and those epics from heroics and rep and badges are my best-in-slot items =) Questing, reputation and non-heroic instances are good to start with.

Yes, I’m starting to think we got the worst combination of adds possible. We had the rogue and the warrior. Hello stunlock, hello death. Gah. But, yes, in future I will definitely insist we peer over the balcony and reset the instance. Might give us more than a wet snowflake’s chance in hell the next time we go. I will take you down, Kael’thas, I will! I will take you down and then take your chicken! (maybe).

Thanks for the advice, we’re grinding non-heroic instances at the moment (because it’s fun!) and doing a random assortment of whatever dailies take our fancy. I don’t think I’m ever going to get bored of having gargloyes eat dark subjugators. Bwahaha🙂

Congratulations! I remember the first time I hit the level cap only vaguely. It was 60 then, and about two months before the release of BC. It was quite bewildering to lose that eternal goal, to reach the next level. Since there was considerably less endgame back then and I didn’t know about any of it, I just continued doing what I had done before: explore, quest, run instances, try random things and see what happens. I think the same approach might work for you… just don’t worry too much about what you think others might think you *should* be doing at 80. There’s no right or wrong way there really!

Thank you for the grats🙂 And you’re right, it totally changes your perspective on, well, basically everything. When you’re levelling although there are some choices ahead of you, like where you want to go, or what you want to priortise, the path is definitely before you. Post-80 there is no path, and maybe you’re in a swamp, or a wood. But there’s definitely no path. The path is a lie🙂

I think exploring, questing, running instances and doing random things sounds exactly like the way I’d like to spend my endgame.

Ooh Ooh. Gratz!
This is just what I wanted to read.
K asked me last night if we’d be finished when we got to 80. (Exactly how deep is this Rabbit Hole?)
I knew people said ‘the game begins at 80’ but I have no way to understand it.

Looking forward to reading what happens to you next.
BTW how long did it take you and M’PT to get there?

It took us ages, truthfully, (like over a year?) but we played in a very dithery way. We got alts, M’Pocket Tank has an Alliance 80, we levelled these two primarily by instancing with a group and when the group fell apart we didn’t play very much at all. We spent a lot of Northrend not actually doing any questing in Northrend and veering off to 2-man Outland dungeons instead. In short: we inadvertantly took the most absurd zigzagging route to 80 we could find.

Also I’ve decided people who say “the game begins at 80” are talking nonsense. I think it’s more accurate to say “a different game begins at 80”. The journey is important, exploring Azeroth, getting to know your class, taking your first spin on Auctioneer and so on and so forth – so many players seem to have careened to 80, only to get there with no clue what they’re doing, or how to play.

The rabbit hole seems to be endless – I think you ‘finish’ when you want to🙂

I love reading about your forays into the Terrace. It lets me experience that place for the first time all over again.

When I was doing that place day in and day out I’d pray a lot. I’d pray that I found a competent mage who could sheepify the things that hurt me. I’d pray to find two mages who could sheepify the things that really really hurt me. It was a joyful time when those prayers were answered, elsewise it was just a massive headache.

I would sometimes let myself dream of having three mages but alas, that never was to be for me.

Oh believe you me, I didn’t start out praying for multiple mages. Just one was fine with me. It was when I accidentally did get two mages in the group for the first time that my life changed and I began to worship at the altar of the arcane, beseeching them for polymorphs in abundance.

I hated Delrissa for the same reasons — it’s too PvP, and it’s not a fight the tank (read: I) can control. Monsters are supposed to hit me, not my party damnit!

So far I like patch 3.2, with one glaring exception. The new forms. I liked the old forms. Sure they were crude and blocky and really outdated, but to me they looked good enough anyway because what I want from my animal forms is for them to look like animals (with a Kaldorei/tauren touch). A simple dark panther and gray bear, proudly displaying the glyph of Cenarius on their shoulders, without stupid frills were all that I wanted. Now? We get more polygons, more colors and better textures — but we also gets lots of stupid, badly done frills that clip awfully with every move. We get bears with crippled forelegs and the same unnatural “nose in the dirt, ass in the clouds” stance that the animal-bears use, instead of the good old level-backed stance of the old forms. The preview screenshots showed the bears standing up properly, so why are they cursed with that stance now? Grr! That aside, I’d like the tauren bears well enough and the night elf bears would be okay but not stellar — their colors look dull and samey and uninspired in comparison.

Catforms? Again, I like the tauren cats well enough, though the head is a bit big and the nosering and armbands are silly. But, you could overlook them. And the color scemes are great, like the tauren bears’. Night elf cats? You can’t overlook the neon collars. Combined with the armbands they look more like some degenerate blood elf’s declawed housepet than anything wild and druidic. And why on earth do they have random eye colors? Night elf eyes are silver by default, gold for someone with a strong druidic potential or an experienced druid. Not pink. The fur colors themselves are the worst though. Pastel plushie toys, anyone? It looks like the form designer spent all his love and energy on the tauren cats and then let his 3-year-old-toddler color the night elves.

Not to mention that while the “hair” color -> fur color associations might make sense for tauren, they totally FAIL for night elves. There is no logic, no consistency. We get mostly natural bears and pastel cats? Sky-blue hair gives a grayish bear and a purple cat? Green hair gives a brown bear and a blue cat? Purple hair gives a brown-and-blue bear and a pink cat? What the hell?

Maybe, in the distant future or WoW2, we may be able to choose form colors independently. I’d love to be able to pick all-black, all-white (the new cat/bear aren’t proper white, they’re dirty off-white), white tiger, black tiger, gray — all the nice, existing feline colors in the game. Or, hell, just give me my old forms back. They were fine.

There, rant over. Sorry. I had such high hopes for “my” new cat, but it’s a huge disappointment. There are so many nice, natural color schemes they could have used, but no … “lol nelves who cares”. Fits the complete disregard for their lore and their beliefs in WoW development, I guess. Just paint them pink and ignore them.

Honestly, despite not being feral, the new forms were what made me give up on my druid. Despite not being a tauren druid, the fact that tauren female druids are still underrepresented is a Slap In The Face. Why is tauren cat form still obviously male?

I will never forget last year’s Blizzcon, when one girl went up during one of the Q&A sessions after a panel to ask them “Why is the tauren cat form male?” and their only response was a laugh of “How can you tell? LOLOL Did you lift up their tails? LOLOL” Without even acknowledging the fact that they have manes.

I was just chalking it up to “well, the forms have been around for a while” but now that they’ve spent the time to redesign the forms, my chance of seeing a female tauren cat form in the next five years or so is just about nil. That’s enough to make me boycott druids. The colors were just an added bonus.

I think the tauren colors are fantastic, or did you mean the night elf ones?

The mane, yeah. It doesn’t really bother me, partly because my druid is Kaldorei I suppose. To be honest I suspect if she was a tauren I’d be somewhat annoyed too, much as I like the new model. It’s also partly because the colors are so kickass, and partly because experience says that a little “masculinity” may well be better than a gender split because “femininity” tends to be characterized in such … unflattering ways. In the end though, I agree that the lack of a female tauren cat is more evidence of a shoddy job in form design. It’s no issue for night elf forms or bears, because with panthers and bears you don’t have this sort of sexual dimorphism. (Then you’d have cries of “unfairness” for not having a “masculine” night elf catform because it’s soooo sissy and girly and whatever. But eh.) Maybe Blizzard should just have gone with cougars instead of lions.

And that Blizzard quote, is that for real? Way to go, talking down to a customer like that for asking a perfectly logical question. Geez.

Yeah, with the colors I meant the night elf ones, because my druid was a night elf. The tauren cat form colors are quite nice.

And I don’t remember if it was “did you lift up their tails” or “did you look under their skirts” but it was definitely one of those, along with the laughing. I was honestly insulted that they would respond that way to such a serious question, in front of thousands of people like that.

Oh God, Kiryn, you’re so right, I’d never thought about it like that, nearly always playing male characters as I do. But, yes, I’d be really really annoyed if I was playing a female anything and my animal form was male. To be fair, the mane-less nelf catforms always looked like they could conceivably be female but I guess that means you’re doomed to a fluid gender identity whichever you choose. And, to be, honest, it wouldn’t be that big a deal to differentiate them a little bit. Make them sleeker, make the face more delicate, take away the mane, problem solved. Now that you’ve drawn attention to it, I’m totally infuriated. It seems like laziness and apathy more than anything.

It’s obvious to me that female tauren druids played by actual females are a small enough demographic that Blizzard doesn’t care to devote the resources to catering to them. I mean, the tauren cat forms look absolutely stunning, don’t get me wrong, but I’m never going to play a druid again because of how fundamentally MALE they are.

M’Pocket Tanks says exactly the same about the Delrissa fight – I mean, what is the point of being/having a tank if you/they can’t tank?! Delrissa’s adds just tear me to pieces, as we’re frozen, helpless and frustrated.

I agree with you about the new bear form – the arse-in-the-air stance is deeply unhelpful and looks ridiculous. I will tank YOUR SHOES! But the Tauren cat-form was horrible, really really horrible, especially compared to its nelf counter-part so I’m glad they revisited it. Although from your comment it sounds like the situation has merely been reversed. Nelves and Tauren cannot be balanced in both having good looking cat forms, obviously. Else there will be an anti-matter explosion in the dilithium chamber and the universe, as we know it, will come to an end (sorry that was an incredibly geeky line).

I haven’t really had much of a chance to look at the nelf forms properly – but I really really like my Tauren cat. I’m glad, actually, he’s neither white nor black, the extremes of the spectrum tend to look a bit, I don’t know, uninspiring to me. He’s a kind of gorgeous russet colour that looks *exactly* like I’d have imagined for him if I’d have been a chance to choose.

The third boss fight in Heroic Magister’s is, in fact, horrible. There are more forgiving combinations that you can get (and hope that you get!), getting the rogue is always awful; as is having that in combination with one of the warriors. I suspect if you got the engineer, hunter, and a caster or two, you might fare well! So, perhaps don’t give up on it just yet! Maybe next time you will have an easier combination!

Tamarind is a holy priest (in World of Warcraft; in real life he is something different) which means - according to some of the folks he has PUGed with - he stands at the back in a sissy robe and does nothing.